India's open data portal launched with 3500 datasets | Articles | FutureGov - Transforming Government | Education | Healthcare

"Looking to promote transparent governance and innovation, India has officially inaugurated Data Portal India, a portal for the public to access and use datasets and applications provided by ministries and departments of the Government of India.The Portal functions as a single access point for open government datasets across the country. Currently, there are about 3500 datasets from 49 government departments available for the public to access and use. The datasets include agriculture, commerce and industry, defence, finance, health, information and broadcasting, energy, transport and water resources, among others.  The Portal also has six apps, all created by government departments. One of these shows national level information on rural sanitation coverage in India. Another provides physical, biological and geological information on oceans and coasts. Currently, the Web Map Service app is rated the highest.  The Portal has various modules which serve different functions to manage the backend system and various functionalities of the Portal, and also facilitate citizen engagement and knowledge sharing.  The Data Portal was developed by India’s National Informatics Centre (NIC) as a platform to support the Open Data Initiative of the Government. The beta version was launched in September 2012.  The Portal was developed using an open source platform called Open Government Platform (OGPL), created by a joint initiative between NIC in India and General Services Administration (GSA) in the United States.  Inaugurating the Portal, Minister for Telecom and IT, Kapil Sibal said, 'The information revolution has gone up to a stage where we are willing to share data with everybody. We realise that in absence of data you cannot take appropriate decision'.  At the same event, Open Data Apps Challenge was also launched, organised by NIC andNational Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM). The challenge invites entrepreneurs and developers to leverage the Portal and create innovative apps.  Adviser to the Prime Minister of India, Sam Pitroda, added, 'Today we have over 3,500 sets of data but in next six months we would like to see that this goes up to 10,000 data sets and we would like to challenge developer community to make at least 100 applications in next month to use this data'."